University Bulletin (2019-2020)

• Minor
• Major (BA)

The department welcomes all members of the student body who have an interest in Africa and/or African America. The major is arranged through consultation with the departmental adviser or another professor. Majors may ask for guidance in the selection of elective courses with related content or approach within their chosen disciplines.

The African and African American Studies Department is multidisciplinary with some of its faculty holding joint appointments in other departments. The department brings together scholars and scholarship from various disciplines to explore the cultures, histories and societies of African and African descended people. The department’s offerings range across the traditional fields of anthropology, economics, history, literature, music, politics. The field of African and African American Studies is not only multidisciplinary, but also interdisciplinary, comparative and cross-cultural. The disciplines are integrated by certain themes that underscore the uniqueness of the department.

First, the AAAS subject matter focuses on African peoples and their cultures and those peoples of the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa who are descendants of Africans. Second, the AAAS department’s courses offer a non-western comparative, and a non-racial approach to the interpretations and understandings of the experiences of African peoples of the wider world social, economic, and political systems. Third, the AAAS courses broadens the scope and range of traditional disciplines and offer general education courses in which the knowledge of the presence, roles, and cultural contributions and experiences of African peoples and their descendants have been omitted or neglected.

The AAAS variety of course offerings affirms the intellectual importance of research and scholarship of the contribution of peoples of African descent globally. In sharing the University’s commitment to academic excellence, the AAAS department provides students with the requisite tools to comprehend, analyze, and evaluate events and phenomena that structure the experiences and possibilities of Africans in the continent of Africa and its diaspora.

Knowledge

Students completing a major in African and African American Studies will come away with a strong understanding of:

1. History of the diversity of African peoples worldwide and their struggles for social, political, and economic empowerment.
2. Contributions of Africans in Africa and the diaspora in the development of the cultural, social, political and global interdependence.
3. How to think critically about arguments based on analysis and evaluation of evidence.
4. Major questions, concepts, theories, ethical and research methodologies used in interdisciplinary comparative, and cross-cultural studies.

Skills

A major in African and African American Studies emphasizes core skills in data collection, critical thinking and communication. AAAS majors will be trained and prepared to:

1. Conduct scholarly, professional and original research applying interdisciplinary, comparative and cross-cultural research methodologies
2. Synthesize, as well as articulate orally and in writing, a coherent narrative about the history, religions, cultures, and societies in the continent of Africa and the Africa diaspora.
3. Situate texts, documents, traditions, ideas, artistic productions and relevant data in their contexts.
4. Evaluate information critically with particular attention to examining and analyzing new areas of research in Africa and the African diaspora.

Social Justice

The African and African American Studies curriculum provides students with knowledge and perspectives necessary to participate as informed citizens in the global community. AAAS courses incorporate a multifaceted approach to social justices. These courses strive to simultaneously promote human development and the common good through addressing challenges related to both individual and distribute justice. This approach allows for the empowerment of individuals and groups as well as active confrontation of injustice and inequality in society, both as they impact clientele and in their systemic contexts. The social justice courses include discussions of four critical principles that guide their work: equity, access, participation, and harmony.

1. From this perspective, equity is the fair distribution of resources, rights and responsibilities to all members of society.
2. Access is key to a socially just world. It includes notions of fairness for both the individual and the common good based on the ability of all people to access the resources, services, power, information, and understanding crucial to realizing a standard of living that allows for self-determination and human development.
3. Participation is also crucial to a socially just world. This principle describes the right of every person in society to partake in and be consulted on decisions that impact their lives as well as the lives of other people in their contexts and systems.
4. The final element of social justice is harmony. This is a principle of social adjustment wherein the actions revolving around the self-interests of any individual or group ultimately produces results that afford the best possible outcomes for the community as a whole.

The AAAS curriculum fosters an open climate for a consideration of a full range of discussion of issues that affect injustice, economic inequities, social, political, and religious oppression in Africa and the African diaspora. The courses address issues that deal with international political economy, poverty alleviation, oppression, exploitation, and economic and political empowerment of the marginalized throughout the world.

Upon Graduating

A Brandeis student with a major in African and African American Studies will be prepared to:

1. Pursue graduate study and a scholarly career in African and African American Studies or in any of the disciplines represented in the department.
2. Pursue professional training in a variety of careers including healthcare, social work, government, international organizations, business, journalism, law, education, entertainment, and non-profit organizations in and outside the United States of America.

Chad Williams, Chair
African American military and political environments of the World War I era.

Salah Hassan (on leave spring 2020)
African and African American art history. African aesthetics. African cinema. Contemporary art and theory.

Wangui Muigai
History of science, medicine, and technology. African American intellectual history. Intersections of race and science.

Wellington Nyangoni (on leave spring 2020)
Africa: economic development. Comparative Third World political economy.

Carina Ray, Study Abroad Liaison
Africa and the Black Atlantic world. Race and sexuality. Comparative colonialisms and nationalisms. Migration and maritime histories. Relationships between race, ethnicity, and political power.

Shoniqua Roach
Black feminisms. Black sexuality studies. African American literature and culture. Visual culture. Performance studies.

Faith Smith, Undergraduate Advising Head
Literature and popular culture of the Caribbean. African American literature. African Diaspora.

Amber Spry
American Politics. Race and identity studies. Political behavior. Political psychology. Inequality and social justice. Quantitative and qualitative research methods.

Affiliated Faculty (contributing to the curriculum, advising and administration of the department or program)
Greg Childs (History)
Abigail Cooper (History)
Richard Gaskins (American Studies)
Anita Hill (Heller School)
Daniel Kryder (Politics)
Janet McIntosh (Anthropology)
Derron Wallace (Sociology)

Five semester courses are required, including the following:

1. AAAS 5a (Introduction to African and African American Studies).
2. One of the following: AAAS 70a (Introduction to African American History), AAAS 79b (African American Literature of the Twentieth Century), AAAS 115a (Introduction to African History), or AAAS 133b (The Literature of the Caribbean).
3. The remaining three courses will be selected from among the department's offerings.
4. No grade below a C- will be given credit toward the minor. No course taken pass/fail may count toward the minor requirements.

Students are required to declare the minor in AAAS no later than the beginning of their senior year. Each student will be assigned a departmental adviser by the undergraduate advising head.

1. Required of all candidates: nine semester courses from among the AAAS and cross-listed courses below. One of the nine courses must be AAAS 5a (Introduction to African and African American Studies).
2. At least one course must be taken in each of the following areas: history, arts and social sciences (see lists in letter C below).
3. At least four courses within one field of specialization listed below.
   1. History: AAAS 70a, AAAS 115a, AAAS 120a, AAAS 131a, AAAS 135a, AAAS 146b, AAAS 155b, AAAS 156a, AAAS 162a, AAAS 168b, AAAS/WGS 125a, HIS/HSSP 142a, HIST 71a, HIST 71b, HIST 153b, HIST 157b, HIST 162a, HIST 172b, HIST 175b.
   2. Arts: AAAS 79b, AAAS 102a, AAAS 132b, AAAS 133b, AAAS 134b, AAAS 155b, AAAS 164b, AAAS/FA 74b, AAAS/WGS 136a, AMST 120a, AMST 121b, COML 168a, ENG 107a, ENG 127b, ENG 138b, ENG 167b, ENG 170a, ENG 172b, HIST 162A, THA 144b.
   3. Social Sciences: AAAS 60a, AAAS 80a, AAAS 82a, AAAS 120a, AAAS 123a, AAAS 125b, AAAS 126b, AAAS 131a, AAAS 135a, AAAS 158a, AAAS 159a, AAAS 161b, AAAS 163b, AAAS 164b, AAAS 175a, AAAS/ENG 141b, ANTH 113b, ECON 69a, ED 170a, HIS/HSSP 142a, HS 515a, HSSP 114b, POL 124b, SOC 113b, SOC 138a, WMGS 170a.
   4. Africa: AAAS 60a, AAAS 102a, AAAS 115a, AAAS 120a, AAAS 122a, AAAS 146b, AAAS 161b, AAAS 162a, AAAS 163b, AAAS/FA 74b, COML 168a, ENG 62b, ENG 170a, ENG 171b, ENG 172b, WMGS 135b.
   5. African-American or the Americas: AAAS 70a, AAAS 79b, AAAS 125b, AAAS 131a, AAAS 133b, AAAS 134b, AAAS 155b, AAAS 156a, AAAS 159a, AAAS 161b, AAAS 168b, AAAS/ENG 80a, AAAS/ENG 141b, AAAS/WGS 136a, AMST 120a, AMST 121b, COML 168a, ECON 69a, ED 170a, ENG 107a, ENG 127b, ENG 138b, ENG 167b, HIST 71a, HIST 71b, HIST 153b, HIST 157b, HIST 162a, HIST 172b, HIST 175b, HS 515a, HSSP 114b, THA 144b.
4. One additional elective which maybe taken from those listed in letter C or from the following: senior essay, senior thesis, independent study.
5. Foundational Literacies: As part of completing the major, students must:
   • Fulfill the writing intensive requirement by successfully completing one of the following: Any AAAS course approved for WI or AAAS/ENG 80a.
   • Fulfill the oral communication requirement by successfully completing one of the following: AAAS 120a, AAAS 124a, AAAS 135a, AAAS 146b, or AAAS 162a.
   • Fulfill the digital literacy requirement by successfully completing: AAAS 5a.

6. Five of the nine required courses must be AAAS-designated. No course with a final grade below C- can count toward the major. No course taken pass/fail may count toward the major requirements.

7. One approved study abroad course per semester may count as an elective.

8. Candidates for departmental honors must satisfactorily complete AAAS 99d (Senior Research).

AAAS 5a Introduction to African and African American Studies
[ deis-us dl ss ]
An interdisciplinary introduction to major topics in African and African American studies. Provides fundamental insights into Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas through approaches and techniques of social science and the humanities. Usually offered every year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 60a Economics of Third World Hunger
[ nw ss ]
Employs the tools of social science, particularly economics, to study causes and potential solutions to problems in production, trade, and consumption of food in the underdeveloped world. Usually offered every second year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 70a Introduction to African American History
[ ss ]
Introduces the experiences of African Americans from the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to the present. Explores major themes that have shaped African American history, such as survival and resistance, struggles for freedom, citizenship and equality, institution building and the meaning of progress. Particular attention given to the role of class, gender and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 79b African American Literature of the Twentieth Century
[ hum ss wi ]
An introduction to the essential themes, aesthetic concerns, and textual strategies that characterize African American writing of this century. Examines those influences that have shaped the poetry, fiction, and prose nonfiction of representative writers. Usually offered every second year.
Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman or Faith Smith

AAAS 80a Economy and Society in Africa
[ nw ss wi ]
Perspectives on the interaction of economic and other variables in African societies. Topics include the ethical and economic bases of distributive justice; models of social theory, efficiency, and equality in law; the role of economic variables in the theory of history; and world systems analysis. Usually offered every third year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 98a Independent Study
Independent readings and research on a topic within the student's interest under the direction of a faculty supervisor. Usually offered every year.
Staff

AAAS 98b Independent Study
Independent readings and research on a topic within the student's interest under the direction of a faculty supervisor. Usually offered every year.
Staff

AAAS 99d Senior Research
Usually offered every year.
Staff

AAAS/ENG 80a Black Looks: The Promise and Perils of Photography
[ deis-us djw hum wi ]
Formerly offered as ENG 80a.
Explores photography and Africans, African-Americans and Caribbean people, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. This course will examine fiction that refers to the photograph; various photographic archives; and theorists on photography and looking. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

AAAS/FA 74b Introduction to African Art
[ ca nw ss ]
Surveys the visual artistic traditions of Africa. Investigates the different forms of visual art in relation to their historical and socio-cultural context. Symbolism and complexity of Africa's visual art traditions are explored through analysis of myth, ritual, cosmology, and history. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

AAAS/FA 75b History of African American Art
[ ca deis-us ]
"Black art has always existed," stated artist Romare Bearden, "It just hasn't been looked for in the right places." This course examines how black artists in the U.S. explore beauty, individuality, justice and other themes through personal, racial, and societal lenses. Usually offered every third year.
Ellen Tani

AAAS 102a African Cinema
[ nw ss ]
Explores the foundation and development of African cinema in the context of African history, culture and politics. Examines issues of social change, gender, class, tradition, and modernization through various African cinematic genres. Usually offered every second year.
Salah Hassan

AAAS 115a Introduction to African History
[ djw nw ss ]
Explores the history of African societies from their earliest beginnings to the present era. Topics include African participation in antiquity as well as early Christianity and preindustrial political, economic, and cultural developments. Usually offered every year.
Staff

AAAS 120a African History in Real Time
[ djw nw oc ss ]
This information literacy-driven course equips students with the skills to place current events in Africa in their historical context. Collectively the class builds 5-6 distinct course modules which entail sourcing and evaluating current newstories from a range of media outlets, selecting those that merit in-depth historical analysis, and developing a syllabus for each one. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 122a Politics of Southern Africa
[ nw ss ]
Study of clashing nationalisms, alternative patterns of development, and internationalization of conflict in southern Africa. The political economy of South Africa in regional context and its effect on the politics of its neighbors, particularly Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. Usually offered every third year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 123a Third World Ideologies
[ nw ss wi ]
Analyzes ideological concepts developed by seminal Third World political thinkers and their application to modern political analysis. Usually offered every second year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 124a After the Dance: Performing Sovereignty in the Caribbean
[ hum oc ss ]
Utilizing short fiction, essays, plays, poetry, and the visual arts, this class theorizes movement and/as freedom in the spectacular or mundane movements of the region, including annual Carnival and Hosay celebrations. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 125b Caribbean Women and Globalization: Sexuality, Citizenship, Work
[ ss wi ]
Utilizing perspectives from sociology, anthropology, fiction, and music to examine the relationship between women's sexuality and conceptions of labor, citizenship, and sovereignty. The course considers these alongside conceptions of masculinity, contending feminisms, and the global perspective. Usually offered every second year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 126b Political Economy of the Third World
[ nw ss wi ]
Development of capitalism and different roles and functions assigned to all "Third Worlds," in the periphery as well as the center. Special attention will be paid to African and African American peripheries. Usually offered every year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 130b Black Brandeis, Black History
[ ss ]
Examines the history of African Americans and other people of African descent at Brandeis University from 1948 to present. Usually offered every third year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 131a African Americans and Health
[ ss ]
Examines African American health experiences from the 17th century to the present, with a focus on the strategies and practices African Americans have employed to improve their health. Explores the historical development of “racial” diseases and inequalities. Topics include: slave health, the black hospital movement, eugenics, midwifery, and the crack and opioid epidemics. Usually offered every second year.
Wangui Muigai

AAAS 132b Introduction to African Literature
[ hum nw ss wi ]
Examines the cultural production of African writers and filmmakers and their critiques of the postcolonial state. Topics include their exploration of gender, sexuality, language choice, the pressures placed on "authentic" identities by diasporic communities, and the conflicting claims of tradition and modernity. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 133b The Literature of the Caribbean
[ hum nw ss wi ]
An exploration of the narrative strategies and themes of writers of the region who grapple with issues of colonialism, class, race, ethnicity, and gender in a context of often-conflicting allegiances to North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Usually offered every second year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 134b Novel and Film of the African Diaspora
[ hum nw ]
Writers and filmmakers, who are usually examined separately under national or regional canonical categories such as "(North) American," "Latin American," "African," "British," or "Caribbean," are brought together here to examine transnational identities and investments in "authentic," "African," or "black" identities. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 135a Race, Sex, and Colonialism
[ djw oc ss ]
Explores the histories of interracial sexual relations as they have unfolded in a range of colonial contexts and examines the relationships between race and sex, on one hand, and the exercise of colonial power, on the other. Usually offered every year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 146b African Icons
[ djw nw oc ss wi ]
From Walatta Petros, a seventeenth century Ethiopian nun turned anticolonial agitator to Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, this course introduces a broad range of iconic figures in Africa's history to students who also acquire the investigative and analytical skills associated with sound historical research and writing. Usually offered every year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 151b Africa: A Reggae Anthology
[ djw nw ss ]
Draws on the genre of reggae music as a course of understanding how Africa, its people, its history, and its contemporary circumstances are imagined, understood, represented, and engaged by African descended people in Jamaica and in the broader African diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 154b Race, Science, and Society
[ deis-us ss ]
Traces scientific concepts of race from the 18th century to today, interrogating their uses and transformations over time. It explores how science has defined race, how people have challenged such conceptions, and alternate ways for understanding human difference. Usually offered every second year.
Wangui Muigai

AAAS 155b Hip Hop History and Culture
[ ss ]
Examines the history of hip hop culture, in the broader context of U.S., African American and African diaspora history, from the 1960s to the present. Explores key developments, debates and themes shaping hip hop's evolution and contemporary global significance. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 156a #BlackLivesMatter
[ ss ]
Explores the evolution of the modern African American civil rights movement through historical readings, primary documents, films and social media. Assesses the legacy and consequences of the movement for contemporary struggles for black equality. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 157a African American Political Thought
[ deis-us ss wi ]
Examines the ideological and intellectual traditions that have influenced African American politics. Addresses the question of what are the best strategies for black Americans to pursue freedom and opportunity in the United States. Usually offered every second year.
Amber Spry

AAAS 158a Theories of Development and Underdevelopment
[ nw ss wi ]
Humankind has for some time now possessed the scientific and technological means to combat the scourge of poverty. The purpose of this seminar is to acquaint students with contending theories of development and underdevelopment, emphasizing the open and contested nature of the process involved and of the field of study itself. Among the topics to be studied are modernization theory, the challenge to modernization posed by dependency and world systems theories, and more recent approaches centered on the concepts of basic needs and of sustainable development. Usually offered every second year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 159a Identity Politics in the United States
[ deis-us ss wi ]
Examines the politics of identity in the United States. It brings together several disciplines: history, political science, sociology, psychology, and others. It spans several groups and social movements in order to equip students with the skills to understand identity group politics through historical contexts, theoretical underpinnings, and current manifestations. The course is organized around a central question: what is the relationship between democracy and identity politics in the United States? In addressing this question, the course will explore the complexities of intergroup relations across race, ethnicity, class, and gender, and examine when, why, and how policy and politics respond to group interests. Usually offered every year.
Amber Spry

AAAS 161b African Diaspora Theory
[ nw ss ]
Examines the contributions of African and African Diaspora intellectuals to critical theory, cultural studies, and the humanities in general. Usually offered every second year.
Salah Hassan

AAAS 162a Assassination: A History of 20th Century Africa
[ djw nw oc ss ]
Examines the assassinations of a range of different political, cultural, and activist figures, such as Patric Lumumba, Steve Biko, and Ken Saro-Wiwa, and assesses the social, political, economic, and cultural implications and legacies this particular form of murder has had on twentieth-century Africa. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 163b Africa in World Politics
[ nw ss ]
Explores the impact of African states in world affairs; the African and Afro-Asian groups in the United Nations; relations with Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the Americas; the Afro-Asian movement; nonalignment; the Organization of African Unity; and Pan-Africanism. Usually offered every second year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 164b Afrofuturism
[ ss ]
Analyzes the various ways in which African Diaspora cultural producers - writers, visual artists, musicians, and filmmakers - use Afrofuturism to critique racial asymmetries in the present and to imagine as-yet-unrealized, free black futures. Usually offered every second year.
Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman

AAAS 168b The Black Intellectual Tradition
[ ss wi ]
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.
Introduces broad historical themes, issues and debates that constitute the black intellectual tradition. Examines the works of male and female black intellectuals from slavery to present. Will explore issues of freedom, citizenship, uplift, gender, and race consciousness. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 170a Black Childhoods
[ deis-us ss ]
Explores historical experiences of growing up black in America. We will examine the role of race in shaping experiences and meanings of childhood from slavery to the present day, including studies of black girlhood and boyhood. Usually offered every second year.
Wangui Maigai

AAAS 175a Comparative Politics of North Africa
[ nw ss ]
Explores the formation and development of political cleavages and cleavage systems, and of mass-based political groups, analyzing the expansion of mass political participation, elections, the impact of the military on political groups, and international factors. Usually offered every third year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS/ENG 141b Critical Race Theory
[ hum ]
Traces an intellectual and political history of critical race theory that begins in law classrooms in the 1980s and continues in the 21st century activist strategies of Black Lives Matter movement. We proceed by reading defining theoretical texts alongside African American literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

AAAS/SOC 177a The Other African Americans: Comparative Perspectives on Black Ethnic Diversity
[ ss ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took AAAS 177a in prior years.
Explores the identities, immigration and integration of Black Africans and Afro-Caribbeans in the United States and United Kingdom from interdisciplinary perspectives. It examines intra-racial and inter-ethnic similarities and differences, conflicts and collaborations that animate the lived experiences of native and new Blacks. Usually offered every second year.
Derron Wallace

AAAS/WGS 125a Intellectual History of Black Women
[ deis-us ss ]
Takes a historical approach to the development of black feminist thought in the United States. We will explore major themes and events in U.S. history from the perspectives of black women (e.g., forced black migration to the Western world, transatlantic slavery, black emancipation from slavery, Jim Crow, the great migration(s), the civil rights era, and the “post” civil rights era, etc.). We will contextualize the emergence of black feminist thought within and in relation to these events, as well as highlight black feminisms’ intersections with other black intellectual traditions and freedom struggles. By the end of the course, students will be able to demonstrate a robust familiarity with the above mentioned historical events as well as define black feminist conceptual/theoretical frameworks such as standpoint theory; oppositional consciousness; intersectionality; the culture of dissemblance; the politics of respectability; controlling images; pleasure, and the erotic, among others. Usually offered every year.
Shoniqua Roach

AAAS/WGS 136a Black Feminist Thought
[ ss ]
Formerly offered as AAAS 136a.
Critical examination of the historical, political, economic, and ideological factors that have shaped the lives of African-American women in the United States. Analyzing foundation theoretical texts, fiction, and film over two centuries, this class seeks to understand black women's writing and political activism in the U.S. Usually offered every second year.
Shoniqua Roach

AAAS/WGS 149a Black Privacy
[ deis-us ]
Informed by recent work in Black feminist, queer, and trans studies, this course explores "Black privacy" and its various meanings and contours. What is Black privacy? Can "Black privacy" exist given the public construction of blackness? How do we make legal claims to Black reproductive, informational, biomedical and domestic privacy when it is already a nebulous concept and an illusory constitutional right? How might Black privacy safeguard against or potentially reinforce the proliferation of public blackness, or its hypervisibility, iconicity, and/or surveillance? What is the erotic potentiality of Black privacy? How do concepts and practices of privacy respond to carceral regimes that animate Black surveillance and counter-surveillance? How do we balance the use of digital media as a strategy of self-making and community building even as Black critical information studies scholars demonstrate that the Internet is a space in which private information is sold and exchanged for "public" resources? Usually offered every second year.
Shoniqua Roach

AAAS 70a Introduction to African American History
[ ss ]
Introduces the experiences of African Americans from the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to the present. Explores major themes that have shaped African American history, such as survival and resistance, struggles for freedom, citizenship and equality, institution building and the meaning of progress. Particular attention given to the role of class, gender and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 115a Introduction to African History
[ djw nw ss ]
Explores the history of African societies from their earliest beginnings to the present era. Topics include African participation in antiquity as well as early Christianity and preindustrial political, economic, and cultural developments. Usually offered every year.
Staff

AAAS 120a African History in Real Time
[ djw nw oc ss ]
This information literacy-driven course equips students with the skills to place current events in Africa in their historical context. Collectively the class builds 5-6 distinct course modules which entail sourcing and evaluating current newstories from a range of media outlets, selecting those that merit in-depth historical analysis, and developing a syllabus for each one. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 130b Black Brandeis, Black History
[ ss ]
Examines the history of African Americans and other people of African descent at Brandeis University from 1948 to present. Usually offered every third year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 131a African Americans and Health
[ ss ]
Examines African American health experiences from the 17th century to the present, with a focus on the strategies and practices African Americans have employed to improve their health. Explores the historical development of “racial” diseases and inequalities. Topics include: slave health, the black hospital movement, eugenics, midwifery, and the crack and opioid epidemics. Usually offered every second year.
Wangui Muigai

AAAS 135a Race, Sex, and Colonialism
[ djw oc ss ]
Explores the histories of interracial sexual relations as they have unfolded in a range of colonial contexts and examines the relationships between race and sex, on one hand, and the exercise of colonial power, on the other. Usually offered every year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 146b African Icons
[ djw nw oc ss wi ]
From Walatta Petros, a seventeenth century Ethiopian nun turned anticolonial agitator to Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, this course introduces a broad range of iconic figures in Africa's history to students who also acquire the investigative and analytical skills associated with sound historical research and writing. Usually offered every year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 151b Africa: A Reggae Anthology
[ djw nw ss ]
Draws on the genre of reggae music as a course of understanding how Africa, its people, its history, and its contemporary circumstances are imagined, understood, represented, and engaged by African descended people in Jamaica and in the broader African diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 154b Race, Science, and Society
[ deis-us ss ]
Traces scientific concepts of race from the 18th century to today, interrogating their uses and transformations over time. It explores how science has defined race, how people have challenged such conceptions, and alternate ways for understanding human difference. Usually offered every second year.
Wangui Muigai

AAAS 155b Hip Hop History and Culture
[ ss ]
Examines the history of hip hop culture, in the broader context of U.S., African American and African diaspora history, from the 1960s to the present. Explores key developments, debates and themes shaping hip hop's evolution and contemporary global significance. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 156a #BlackLivesMatter
[ ss ]
Explores the evolution of the modern African American civil rights movement through historical readings, primary documents, films and social media. Assesses the legacy and consequences of the movement for contemporary struggles for black equality. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 162a Assassination: A History of 20th Century Africa
[ djw nw oc ss ]
Examines the assassinations of a range of different political, cultural, and activist figures, such as Patric Lumumba, Steve Biko, and Ken Saro-Wiwa, and assesses the social, political, economic, and cultural implications and legacies this particular form of murder has had on twentieth-century Africa. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 168b The Black Intellectual Tradition
[ ss wi ]
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.
Introduces broad historical themes, issues and debates that constitute the black intellectual tradition. Examines the works of male and female black intellectuals from slavery to present. Will explore issues of freedom, citizenship, uplift, gender, and race consciousness. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 170a Black Childhoods
[ deis-us ss ]
Explores historical experiences of growing up black in America. We will examine the role of race in shaping experiences and meanings of childhood from slavery to the present day, including studies of black girlhood and boyhood. Usually offered every second year.
Wangui Maigai

AAAS/WGS 125a Intellectual History of Black Women
[ deis-us ss ]
Takes a historical approach to the development of black feminist thought in the United States. We will explore major themes and events in U.S. history from the perspectives of black women (e.g., forced black migration to the Western world, transatlantic slavery, black emancipation from slavery, Jim Crow, the great migration(s), the civil rights era, and the “post” civil rights era, etc.). We will contextualize the emergence of black feminist thought within and in relation to these events, as well as highlight black feminisms’ intersections with other black intellectual traditions and freedom struggles. By the end of the course, students will be able to demonstrate a robust familiarity with the above mentioned historical events as well as define black feminist conceptual/theoretical frameworks such as standpoint theory; oppositional consciousness; intersectionality; the culture of dissemblance; the politics of respectability; controlling images; pleasure, and the erotic, among others. Usually offered every year.
Shoniqua Roach

HIS/HSSP 142a Health Activism
[ deis-us oc ss ]
Formerly offered as HSSP 142a.
Examines the history of health activism in the U.S. over the past 125 years, from late 19th century debates over compulsory vaccination to contemporary public health campaigns around gang violence and incarceration. Usually offered every third year.
Wangui Muigai

HIST 71a Latin American and Caribbean History I: Colonialism, Slavery, Freedom
[ djw hum nw ss ]
Studies colonialism in Latin America and Caribbean, focusing on coerced labor and struggles for freedom as defining features of the period: conquest; Indigenous, African, and Asian labor; colonial institutions and economics; Independence and revolutionary movements. Usually offered every year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 71b Latin American and Caribbean History II: Modernity, Medicine, Sexuality
[ djw hum nw ss ]
Studies the idea of "modernity" in Latin America and Caribbean, centered on roles of health and human reproduction in definitions of the "modern" citizen: post-slavery labor, race and national identity; modern politics and economics; transnational relations. Usually offered every year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 153b Slavery and the American Civil War
[ deis-us dl ss ]
A survey of the history of slavery, the American South, the antislavery movement, the coming of the Civil War, and Reconstruction. Usually offered every second year.
Abigail Cooper

HIST 157b The Secret Lives of the Enslaved: Marginalized Voices and the Writing of History
[ deis-us dl ss wi ]
Seeks to understand not only the system but the inner lives and cultures of slaves within that system. This course is a reading-intensive seminar examining both primary and secondary sources on American slaves. Focuses on the American South but includes sources on the larger African diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Abigail Cooper

HIST 159b Modern African American History
[ deis-us ss ]
Introduces students to some of the key social, political, economic, and cultural moments that defined the African American experience in the United States, 1865 through the present. Through the use of primary and secondary source materials, critical surveys, lectures, and guided discussion, this class highlights the richness and significance of the African American history. This course covers a diverse array of key themes and topics including: Reconstruction and segregation; the Great Migration; the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Feminist movements; black political power; mass incarceration and the surveillance state; and Hip Hop culture. Usually offered every second year.
Leah Wright Rigueur

HIST 162a Writing on the Wall: Histories of Graffiti in the Americas
[ djw dl ss ]
Focuses on the history of graffiti in the U.S. from 1960s forward. Includes the historical role of Caribbean migration, the impact of criminology and economic recession of the 1970s on graffiti culture, and the relationship between private property, public space, and graffiti. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 172b Historicizing the Black Radical Tradition
[ djw ss ]
Introduces students to the many ways that people and scholars of African descent have historically struggled against racial oppresion by formulating theories, philosophies, and practices of liberation rooted in their experiences and understandings of labor, capitalism, and modernity. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 175b Resistance and Revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean
[ djw nw ss wi ]
Focuses on questions of race, gender and modernity in resistence movements and revolutions in Latin American and Caribbean history. The Haitian Revolution, Tupac Amaru Rebellion, and Vaccination Riots in Brazil are some topics that will be covered. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

AAAS 79b African American Literature of the Twentieth Century
[ hum ss wi ]
An introduction to the essential themes, aesthetic concerns, and textual strategies that characterize African American writing of this century. Examines those influences that have shaped the poetry, fiction, and prose nonfiction of representative writers. Usually offered every second year.
Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman or Faith Smith

AAAS 102a African Cinema
[ nw ss ]
Explores the foundation and development of African cinema in the context of African history, culture and politics. Examines issues of social change, gender, class, tradition, and modernization through various African cinematic genres. Usually offered every second year.
Salah Hassan

AAAS 124a After the Dance: Performing Sovereignty in the Caribbean
[ hum oc ss ]
Utilizing short fiction, essays, plays, poetry, and the visual arts, this class theorizes movement and/as freedom in the spectacular or mundane movements of the region, including annual Carnival and Hosay celebrations. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 132b Introduction to African Literature
[ hum nw ss wi ]
Examines the cultural production of African writers and filmmakers and their critiques of the postcolonial state. Topics include their exploration of gender, sexuality, language choice, the pressures placed on "authentic" identities by diasporic communities, and the conflicting claims of tradition and modernity. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 133b The Literature of the Caribbean
[ hum nw ss wi ]
An exploration of the narrative strategies and themes of writers of the region who grapple with issues of colonialism, class, race, ethnicity, and gender in a context of often-conflicting allegiances to North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Usually offered every second year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 134b Novel and Film of the African Diaspora
[ hum nw ]
Writers and filmmakers, who are usually examined separately under national or regional canonical categories such as "(North) American," "Latin American," "African," "British," or "Caribbean," are brought together here to examine transnational identities and investments in "authentic," "African," or "black" identities. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 151b Africa: A Reggae Anthology
[ djw nw ss ]
Draws on the genre of reggae music as a course of understanding how Africa, its people, its history, and its contemporary circumstances are imagined, understood, represented, and engaged by African descended people in Jamaica and in the broader African diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 155b Hip Hop History and Culture
[ ss ]
Examines the history of hip hop culture, in the broader context of U.S., African American and African diaspora history, from the 1960s to the present. Explores key developments, debates and themes shaping hip hop's evolution and contemporary global significance. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 164b Afrofuturism
[ ss ]
Analyzes the various ways in which African Diaspora cultural producers - writers, visual artists, musicians, and filmmakers - use Afrofuturism to critique racial asymmetries in the present and to imagine as-yet-unrealized, free black futures. Usually offered every second year.
Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman

AAAS/ENG 80a Black Looks: The Promise and Perils of Photography
[ deis-us djw hum wi ]
Formerly offered as ENG 80a.
Explores photography and Africans, African-Americans and Caribbean people, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. This course will examine fiction that refers to the photograph; various photographic archives; and theorists on photography and looking. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

AAAS/FA 74b Introduction to African Art
[ ca nw ss ]
Surveys the visual artistic traditions of Africa. Investigates the different forms of visual art in relation to their historical and socio-cultural context. Symbolism and complexity of Africa's visual art traditions are explored through analysis of myth, ritual, cosmology, and history. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

AAAS/FA 75b History of African American Art
[ ca deis-us ]
"Black art has always existed," stated artist Romare Bearden, "It just hasn't been looked for in the right places." This course examines how black artists in the U.S. explore beauty, individuality, justice and other themes through personal, racial, and societal lenses. Usually offered every third year.
Ellen Tani

AAAS/WGS 136a Black Feminist Thought
[ ss ]
Formerly offered as AAAS 136a.
Critical examination of the historical, political, economic, and ideological factors that have shaped the lives of African-American women in the United States. Analyzing foundation theoretical texts, fiction, and film over two centuries, this class seeks to understand black women's writing and political activism in the U.S. Usually offered every second year.
Shoniqua Roach

AAAS/WGS 149a Black Privacy
[ deis-us ]
Informed by recent work in Black feminist, queer, and trans studies, this course explores "Black privacy" and its various meanings and contours. What is Black privacy? Can "Black privacy" exist given the public construction of blackness? How do we make legal claims to Black reproductive, informational, biomedical and domestic privacy when it is already a nebulous concept and an illusory constitutional right? How might Black privacy safeguard against or potentially reinforce the proliferation of public blackness, or its hypervisibility, iconicity, and/or surveillance? What is the erotic potentiality of Black privacy? How do concepts and practices of privacy respond to carceral regimes that animate Black surveillance and counter-surveillance? How do we balance the use of digital media as a strategy of self-making and community building even as Black critical information studies scholars demonstrate that the Internet is a space in which private information is sold and exchanged for "public" resources? Usually offered every second year.
Shoniqua Roach

AMST 120a The Social and Theological Development of the Black Church in America
[ ss ]
Introduces students to the complex development of black Christianity in America. Topics include the emergence of various denominations; the development of particular theological, liturgical, and musical traditions; and the impact the black church has had on the political lives of African-Americans. Usually offered every second year.
Cory Hunter

AMST 121b Gospel Music in America
[ ss ]
Students learn how to "read" gospel music as a text – musically, lyrically, and from the standpoint of physical and visual performance. They explore gospel music's theological underpinnings, and they consider how gospel has shaped and been shaped by African-American history can culture. Usually offered every second year.
Cory Hunter

COML 168a Things Fall Apart: The Novel and Postcolonial Anarchy
[ hum ]
Explores the shared history of British Imperialism and examines the postcolonial novel's response to the breakdown of colonial power and the advent of the postcolonial state. We will read novels from South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Usually offered every fourth year.
Harleen Singh

ENG 48b The Black Fantastic
[ deis-us hum ]
What is the "fantastic" and how does its definition shift when preceded by the adjective "black"? How do black authors use fantastic forms to not only tell "truths" unavailable in "realistic" narratives, but to imagine freer futures? Usually offered every third year.
Gabrielle Everett

ENG 107a Women Writing Desire: Caribbean Fiction and Film
[ hum ]
About eight novels of the last two decades (by Cliff, Cruz, Danticat, Garcia, Kempadoo, Kincaid, Mittoo, Nunez, Pineau, Powell, or Rosario), drawn from across the region, and read in dialogue with popular culture, theory, and earlier generations of male and female writers of the region. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

ENG 117a The Harlem Renaissance
[ deis-us hum ]
Examines the explosive artistic, political, and cultural period known as the Harlem Renaissance. A major movement in African American literature, the Harlem Renaissance sought to redefine American blackness and establish artistic freedom. Usually offered every third year.
Gabrielle Everett

ENG 127b Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts
[ hum nw ]
Beginning with the region's representation as a tabula rasa, examines the textual and visual constructions of the Caribbean as colony, homeland, backyard, paradise, and Babylon, and how the region's migrations have prompted ideas about evolution, hedonism, imperialism, nationalism, and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Faith Smith

ENG 137b Women and War
[ djw dl hum nw ]
Examines how African women writers and filmmakers use testimony to bear witness to mass violence. How do these writers resist political and sociocultural silencing systems that reduce traumatic experience to silence, denial, and terror? Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 138b Toni Morrison
[ hum ]
An advanced introduction to the oeuvre of Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison. Reading her novels and nonfiction, we investigate concerns that shaped our world in the last century and haunt the current one, foregrounding Morrison's writing as a key site of trouble and of transformation. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 143b Chaucer’s “Global and Refugee Canterbury Tales"
[ deis-us djw dl hum ]
Focuses on situating Chaucer, and particularly the Canterbury Tales, as a global
work. We will examine black feminist writers, playwrights, and poets of the African diaspora who have revised, adapted, extrapolated, and voiced the Canterbury Tales in Jamaican patois, Nigerian pidgin, and the S. London dialects of Brixton. Usually offered every second year.
Dorothy Kim

ENG 167b Writing the Nation: James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison
[ deis-us hum ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 57b in prior years.
An in-depth study of three major American authors of the twentieth century. Highlights the contributions of each author to the American literary canon and to its diversity. Explores how these novelists narrate cross-racial, cross-gendered, cross-regional, and cross-cultural contact and conflict in the United States. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 170a The Globalization of Nollywood
[ hum nw ]
Introduces students to Nigeria's film industry, one of the world's largest. It focuses on both the form and the content of Nollywood films. Examines how Nollywood films project local, national, and regional issues onto global screens. Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 172b African Literature and Human Rights
[ hum nw ]
Human rights have been central to thinking about Africa. What do we mean when we speak of human rights? Are we asserting a natural and universal equality among all people, regardless of race, class, gender, or geography? Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

HIST 162a Writing on the Wall: Histories of Graffiti in the Americas
[ djw dl ss ]
Focuses on the history of graffiti in the U.S. from 1960s forward. Includes the historical role of Caribbean migration, the impact of criminology and economic recession of the 1970s on graffiti culture, and the relationship between private property, public space, and graffiti. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

THA 144b Black Theater and Performance
[ ca deis-us ]
Explores aesthetic innovations and transformations in African American theater and performance and examines the crucial role the stage has played in shaping perceptions and understandings of blackness. Usually offered every second year.
Isaiah Wooden

AAAS 60a Economics of Third World Hunger
[ nw ss ]
Employs the tools of social science, particularly economics, to study causes and potential solutions to problems in production, trade, and consumption of food in the underdeveloped world. Usually offered every second year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 80a Economy and Society in Africa
[ nw ss wi ]
Perspectives on the interaction of economic and other variables in African societies. Topics include the ethical and economic bases of distributive justice; models of social theory, efficiency, and equality in law; the role of economic variables in the theory of history; and world systems analysis. Usually offered every third year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 120a African History in Real Time
[ djw nw oc ss ]
This information literacy-driven course equips students with the skills to place current events in Africa in their historical context. Collectively the class builds 5-6 distinct course modules which entail sourcing and evaluating current newstories from a range of media outlets, selecting those that merit in-depth historical analysis, and developing a syllabus for each one. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 123a Third World Ideologies
[ nw ss wi ]
Analyzes ideological concepts developed by seminal Third World political thinkers and their application to modern political analysis. Usually offered every second year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 125b Caribbean Women and Globalization: Sexuality, Citizenship, Work
[ ss wi ]
Utilizing perspectives from sociology, anthropology, fiction, and music to examine the relationship between women's sexuality and conceptions of labor, citizenship, and sovereignty. The course considers these alongside conceptions of masculinity, contending feminisms, and the global perspective. Usually offered every second year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 126b Political Economy of the Third World
[ nw ss wi ]
Development of capitalism and different roles and functions assigned to all "Third Worlds," in the periphery as well as the center. Special attention will be paid to African and African American peripheries. Usually offered every year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 131a African Americans and Health
[ ss ]
Examines African American health experiences from the 17th century to the present, with a focus on the strategies and practices African Americans have employed to improve their health. Explores the historical development of “racial” diseases and inequalities. Topics include: slave health, the black hospital movement, eugenics, midwifery, and the crack and opioid epidemics. Usually offered every second year.
Wangui Muigai

AAAS 135a Race, Sex, and Colonialism
[ djw oc ss ]
Explores the histories of interracial sexual relations as they have unfolded in a range of colonial contexts and examines the relationships between race and sex, on one hand, and the exercise of colonial power, on the other. Usually offered every year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 154b Race, Science, and Society
[ deis-us ss ]
Traces scientific concepts of race from the 18th century to today, interrogating their uses and transformations over time. It explores how science has defined race, how people have challenged such conceptions, and alternate ways for understanding human difference. Usually offered every second year.
Wangui Muigai

AAAS 157a African American Political Thought
[ deis-us ss wi ]
Examines the ideological and intellectual traditions that have influenced African American politics. Addresses the question of what are the best strategies for black Americans to pursue freedom and opportunity in the United States. Usually offered every second year.
Amber Spry

AAAS 158a Theories of Development and Underdevelopment
[ nw ss wi ]
Humankind has for some time now possessed the scientific and technological means to combat the scourge of poverty. The purpose of this seminar is to acquaint students with contending theories of development and underdevelopment, emphasizing the open and contested nature of the process involved and of the field of study itself. Among the topics to be studied are modernization theory, the challenge to modernization posed by dependency and world systems theories, and more recent approaches centered on the concepts of basic needs and of sustainable development. Usually offered every second year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 159a Identity Politics in the United States
[ deis-us ss wi ]
Examines the politics of identity in the United States. It brings together several disciplines: history, political science, sociology, psychology, and others. It spans several groups and social movements in order to equip students with the skills to understand identity group politics through historical contexts, theoretical underpinnings, and current manifestations. The course is organized around a central question: what is the relationship between democracy and identity politics in the United States? In addressing this question, the course will explore the complexities of intergroup relations across race, ethnicity, class, and gender, and examine when, why, and how policy and politics respond to group interests. Usually offered every year.
Amber Spry

AAAS 161b African Diaspora Theory
[ nw ss ]
Examines the contributions of African and African Diaspora intellectuals to critical theory, cultural studies, and the humanities in general. Usually offered every second year.
Salah Hassan

AAAS 163b Africa in World Politics
[ nw ss ]
Explores the impact of African states in world affairs; the African and Afro-Asian groups in the United Nations; relations with Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the Americas; the Afro-Asian movement; nonalignment; the Organization of African Unity; and Pan-Africanism. Usually offered every second year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 164b Afrofuturism
[ ss ]
Analyzes the various ways in which African Diaspora cultural producers - writers, visual artists, musicians, and filmmakers - use Afrofuturism to critique racial asymmetries in the present and to imagine as-yet-unrealized, free black futures. Usually offered every second year.
Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman

AAAS 175a Comparative Politics of North Africa
[ nw ss ]
Explores the formation and development of political cleavages and cleavage systems, and of mass-based political groups, analyzing the expansion of mass political participation, elections, the impact of the military on political groups, and international factors. Usually offered every third year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS/ENG 141b Critical Race Theory
[ hum ]
Traces an intellectual and political history of critical race theory that begins in law classrooms in the 1980s and continues in the 21st century activist strategies of Black Lives Matter movement. We proceed by reading defining theoretical texts alongside African American literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

AAAS/SOC 177a The Other African Americans: Comparative Perspectives on Black Ethnic Diversity
[ ss ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took AAAS 177a in prior years.
Explores the identities, immigration and integration of Black Africans and Afro-Caribbeans in the United States and United Kingdom from interdisciplinary perspectives. It examines intra-racial and inter-ethnic similarities and differences, conflicts and collaborations that animate the lived experiences of native and new Blacks. Usually offered every second year.
Derron Wallace

AAAS/WGS 136a Black Feminist Thought
[ ss ]
Formerly offered as AAAS 136a.
Critical examination of the historical, political, economic, and ideological factors that have shaped the lives of African-American women in the United States. Analyzing foundation theoretical texts, fiction, and film over two centuries, this class seeks to understand black women's writing and political activism in the U.S. Usually offered every second year.
Shoniqua Roach

AAAS/WGS 149a Black Privacy
[ deis-us ]
Informed by recent work in Black feminist, queer, and trans studies, this course explores "Black privacy" and its various meanings and contours. What is Black privacy? Can "Black privacy" exist given the public construction of blackness? How do we make legal claims to Black reproductive, informational, biomedical and domestic privacy when it is already a nebulous concept and an illusory constitutional right? How might Black privacy safeguard against or potentially reinforce the proliferation of public blackness, or its hypervisibility, iconicity, and/or surveillance? What is the erotic potentiality of Black privacy? How do concepts and practices of privacy respond to carceral regimes that animate Black surveillance and counter-surveillance? How do we balance the use of digital media as a strategy of self-making and community building even as Black critical information studies scholars demonstrate that the Internet is a space in which private information is sold and exchanged for "public" resources? Usually offered every second year.
Shoniqua Roach

ANTH 31b African Ways of Knowing
[ djw nw ss ]
Surveys the diversity of knowledge production across Africa south of the Sahara. Participants consider multidisciplinary approaches to epistemological questions and how they become enacted in social life, with case studies drawn from West Africa, East Africa, and southern Africa. Special one-time offering, spring 2020.
Douglas Bafford

ANTH 113b Race and Ethnicity: Anthropological Perspectives
[ ss ]
Examines theories and ethnographies of race and ethnicity through three units: literary and social scientific theories of race and othering; the race system in the U.S. today; and a comparative look at the American racial system to explore ways in which America’s race system varies cross-societally and cross-historically. One goal of the course is to understand changing ideas of race and ethnicity that have emerged from anthropologists and cultural critics. Usually offered every fourth year.
Patricia Alvarez

ECON 69a The Economics of Race and Gender
[ deis-us ss ]
Prerequisite: ECON 2a or 10a.
The role of race and gender in economic decision making. Mainstream and alternative economic explanations for discrimination, and analysis of the economic status of women and minorities. Discussion of specific public policies related to race, class, and gender. Usually offered every second year.
Elizabeth Brainerd

ED 170a Critical Perspectives in Urban Education
[ ss wi ]
Examines the nature of urban schools, their links to the social and political context, and the perspectives of the people who inhabit them. Explores the historical development of urban schools; the social, economic, and personal hardships facing urban students; and challenges of urban school reform. Usually offered every year.
Derron Wallace

HIS/HSSP 142a Health Activism
[ deis-us oc ss ]
Formerly offered as HSSP 142a.
Examines the history of health activism in the U.S. over the past 125 years, from late 19th century debates over compulsory vaccination to contemporary public health campaigns around gang violence and incarceration. Usually offered every third year.
Wangui Muigai

HS 515a Race/Ethnicity and Gender in Health and Human Services Research
Explores theoretical and empirical approaches to race/ethnicity and gender as factors in health and human services practices, programs, and policies in the United States. Begins by examining current data on racial/ethnic and gender differences in health, mental health, functional status, and lifestyle. Attention then turns to alternative accounts of the causes of these differences. Although primary focus is on patterns of race/ethnicity and gender differences in health outcomes and services that have received the most comprehensive attention, the course offers perspectives on research methods and analytic frameworks that can be applied to other issues. Usually offered every year.
Rajesh Sampath

HSSP 114b Racial/Ethnic and Gender Inequalities in Health and Health Care
[ ss ]
An examination of the epidemiological patterns of health status by race/ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic status. Addresses current theories and critiques explaining disparities in health status, access, quality, and conceptual models, frameworks, and interventions for eliminating inequalities. Usually offered every year.
Staff

POL 124b Seminar: Race, Inequality, and Social Policy
[ ss ]
Explores the causes and consequences of economic, social, and political inequality in the United States. Examines trends from the perspective of both liberal and conservative social scientists. Asks what forms of inequality matter and what should be done about them. Usually offered every year.
Staff

SOC 113b Sociology of Race and Racism
[ ss ]
Provides an introduction to the study of race and racism and focuses on specific socio-historical issues surrounding racial inequality in the United States. A variety of media to examine topics such as the institutionalization of white privilege, the social construction of "otherness", racial formation processes, and racial segregation are used" Usually offered every third year.
Derron Wallace

SOC 138a Sociology of Race, Gender, and Class
[ oc ss ]
Examines race, class and gender as critical dimensions of social difference that organize social systems. Uses a variety of media to analyze how race, class and gender as axes of identity and inequality (re)create forms of domination and subordination in schools, labor markets, families, and the criminal justice system. Usually offered every third year. Usually offered every third year.
Derron Wallace

WMGS 170a Blackness and Masculinity
[ ss ]
Introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of masculinity by focusing on its intersection with blackness. We will explore historical and contemporary theories and issues through the lens of freedom. Examines the social, political, economic freedoms of everyday black masculine lives. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

AAAS 60a Economics of Third World Hunger
[ nw ss ]
Employs the tools of social science, particularly economics, to study causes and potential solutions to problems in production, trade, and consumption of food in the underdeveloped world. Usually offered every second year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 102a African Cinema
[ nw ss ]
Explores the foundation and development of African cinema in the context of African history, culture and politics. Examines issues of social change, gender, class, tradition, and modernization through various African cinematic genres. Usually offered every second year.
Salah Hassan

AAAS 115a Introduction to African History
[ djw nw ss ]
Explores the history of African societies from their earliest beginnings to the present era. Topics include African participation in antiquity as well as early Christianity and preindustrial political, economic, and cultural developments. Usually offered every year.
Staff

AAAS 120a African History in Real Time
[ djw nw oc ss ]
This information literacy-driven course equips students with the skills to place current events in Africa in their historical context. Collectively the class builds 5-6 distinct course modules which entail sourcing and evaluating current newstories from a range of media outlets, selecting those that merit in-depth historical analysis, and developing a syllabus for each one. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 122a Politics of Southern Africa
[ nw ss ]
Study of clashing nationalisms, alternative patterns of development, and internationalization of conflict in southern Africa. The political economy of South Africa in regional context and its effect on the politics of its neighbors, particularly Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. Usually offered every third year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS 146b African Icons
[ djw nw oc ss wi ]
From Walatta Petros, a seventeenth century Ethiopian nun turned anticolonial agitator to Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, this course introduces a broad range of iconic figures in Africa's history to students who also acquire the investigative and analytical skills associated with sound historical research and writing. Usually offered every year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 151b Africa: A Reggae Anthology
[ djw nw ss ]
Draws on the genre of reggae music as a course of understanding how Africa, its people, its history, and its contemporary circumstances are imagined, understood, represented, and engaged by African descended people in Jamaica and in the broader African diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 161b African Diaspora Theory
[ nw ss ]
Examines the contributions of African and African Diaspora intellectuals to critical theory, cultural studies, and the humanities in general. Usually offered every second year.
Salah Hassan

AAAS 162a Assassination: A History of 20th Century Africa
[ djw nw oc ss ]
Examines the assassinations of a range of different political, cultural, and activist figures, such as Patric Lumumba, Steve Biko, and Ken Saro-Wiwa, and assesses the social, political, economic, and cultural implications and legacies this particular form of murder has had on twentieth-century Africa. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 163b Africa in World Politics
[ nw ss ]
Explores the impact of African states in world affairs; the African and Afro-Asian groups in the United Nations; relations with Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the Americas; the Afro-Asian movement; nonalignment; the Organization of African Unity; and Pan-Africanism. Usually offered every second year.
Wellington Nyangoni

AAAS/FA 74b Introduction to African Art
[ ca nw ss ]
Surveys the visual artistic traditions of Africa. Investigates the different forms of visual art in relation to their historical and socio-cultural context. Symbolism and complexity of Africa's visual art traditions are explored through analysis of myth, ritual, cosmology, and history. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

ANTH 31b African Ways of Knowing
[ djw nw ss ]
Surveys the diversity of knowledge production across Africa south of the Sahara. Participants consider multidisciplinary approaches to epistemological questions and how they become enacted in social life, with case studies drawn from West Africa, East Africa, and southern Africa. Special one-time offering, spring 2020.
Douglas Bafford

COML 168a Things Fall Apart: The Novel and Postcolonial Anarchy
[ hum ]
Explores the shared history of British Imperialism and examines the postcolonial novel's response to the breakdown of colonial power and the advent of the postcolonial state. We will read novels from South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Usually offered every fourth year.
Harleen Singh

ENG 62b Contemporary African Literature, Global Perspectives
[ hum nw ]
What is "African" in African literature when the majority of writers are somehow removed from the African societies they portray? How do expatriate writers represent African subjectivities and cultures at the intersection of Diaspora and globalization? Who reads the works produced by these writers? Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 137b Women and War
[ djw dl hum nw ]
Examines how African women writers and filmmakers use testimony to bear witness to mass violence. How do these writers resist political and sociocultural silencing systems that reduce traumatic experience to silence, denial, and terror? Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 170a The Globalization of Nollywood
[ hum nw ]
Introduces students to Nigeria's film industry, one of the world's largest. It focuses on both the form and the content of Nollywood films. Examines how Nollywood films project local, national, and regional issues onto global screens. Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 171b African Feminism(s)
[ hum nw ]
Examines African Feminism(s) as a literary and activist movement that underlines the need for centering African women's experiences in the study of African cultures, societies, and histories. Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 172b African Literature and Human Rights
[ hum nw ]
Human rights have been central to thinking about Africa. What do we mean when we speak of human rights? Are we asserting a natural and universal equality among all people, regardless of race, class, gender, or geography? Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

WMGS 135b Postcolonial Feminisms
[ hum ]
Examines feminist theories, literature, and film from formerly colonized, Anglophone countries in South Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa. It takes the shared path of decolonization and postcoloniality to discuss the development of feminist discourse and the diverse trajectories of gendered lives. Usually offered every third year.
Harleen Singh

AAAS 70a Introduction to African American History
[ ss ]
Introduces the experiences of African Americans from the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to the present. Explores major themes that have shaped African American history, such as survival and resistance, struggles for freedom, citizenship and equality, institution building and the meaning of progress. Particular attention given to the role of class, gender and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 79b African American Literature of the Twentieth Century
[ hum ss wi ]
An introduction to the essential themes, aesthetic concerns, and textual strategies that characterize African American writing of this century. Examines those influences that have shaped the poetry, fiction, and prose nonfiction of representative writers. Usually offered every second year.
Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman or Faith Smith

AAAS 124a After the Dance: Performing Sovereignty in the Caribbean
[ hum oc ss ]
Utilizing short fiction, essays, plays, poetry, and the visual arts, this class theorizes movement and/as freedom in the spectacular or mundane movements of the region, including annual Carnival and Hosay celebrations. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 125b Caribbean Women and Globalization: Sexuality, Citizenship, Work
[ ss wi ]
Utilizing perspectives from sociology, anthropology, fiction, and music to examine the relationship between women's sexuality and conceptions of labor, citizenship, and sovereignty. The course considers these alongside conceptions of masculinity, contending feminisms, and the global perspective. Usually offered every second year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 130b Black Brandeis, Black History
[ ss ]
Examines the history of African Americans and other people of African descent at Brandeis University from 1948 to present. Usually offered every third year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 131a African Americans and Health
[ ss ]
Examines African American health experiences from the 17th century to the present, with a focus on the strategies and practices African Americans have employed to improve their health. Explores the historical development of “racial” diseases and inequalities. Topics include: slave health, the black hospital movement, eugenics, midwifery, and the crack and opioid epidemics. Usually offered every second year.
Wangui Muigai

AAAS 133b The Literature of the Caribbean
[ hum nw ss wi ]
An exploration of the narrative strategies and themes of writers of the region who grapple with issues of colonialism, class, race, ethnicity, and gender in a context of often-conflicting allegiances to North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Usually offered every second year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 134b Novel and Film of the African Diaspora
[ hum nw ]
Writers and filmmakers, who are usually examined separately under national or regional canonical categories such as "(North) American," "Latin American," "African," "British," or "Caribbean," are brought together here to examine transnational identities and investments in "authentic," "African," or "black" identities. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

AAAS 151b Africa: A Reggae Anthology
[ djw nw ss ]
Draws on the genre of reggae music as a course of understanding how Africa, its people, its history, and its contemporary circumstances are imagined, understood, represented, and engaged by African descended people in Jamaica and in the broader African diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Carina Ray

AAAS 154b Race, Science, and Society
[ deis-us ss ]
Traces scientific concepts of race from the 18th century to today, interrogating their uses and transformations over time. It explores how science has defined race, how people have challenged such conceptions, and alternate ways for understanding human difference. Usually offered every second year.
Wangui Muigai

AAAS 155b Hip Hop History and Culture
[ ss ]
Examines the history of hip hop culture, in the broader context of U.S., African American and African diaspora history, from the 1960s to the present. Explores key developments, debates and themes shaping hip hop's evolution and contemporary global significance. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 156a #BlackLivesMatter
[ ss ]
Explores the evolution of the modern African American civil rights movement through historical readings, primary documents, films and social media. Assesses the legacy and consequences of the movement for contemporary struggles for black equality. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 157a African American Political Thought
[ deis-us ss wi ]
Examines the ideological and intellectual traditions that have influenced African American politics. Addresses the question of what are the best strategies for black Americans to pursue freedom and opportunity in the United States. Usually offered every second year.
Amber Spry

AAAS 159a Identity Politics in the United States
[ deis-us ss wi ]
Examines the politics of identity in the United States. It brings together several disciplines: history, political science, sociology, psychology, and others. It spans several groups and social movements in order to equip students with the skills to understand identity group politics through historical contexts, theoretical underpinnings, and current manifestations. The course is organized around a central question: what is the relationship between democracy and identity politics in the United States? In addressing this question, the course will explore the complexities of intergroup relations across race, ethnicity, class, and gender, and examine when, why, and how policy and politics respond to group interests. Usually offered every year.
Amber Spry

AAAS 161b African Diaspora Theory
[ nw ss ]
Examines the contributions of African and African Diaspora intellectuals to critical theory, cultural studies, and the humanities in general. Usually offered every second year.
Salah Hassan

AAAS 168b The Black Intellectual Tradition
[ ss wi ]
Prerequisite: Sophomore standing.
Introduces broad historical themes, issues and debates that constitute the black intellectual tradition. Examines the works of male and female black intellectuals from slavery to present. Will explore issues of freedom, citizenship, uplift, gender, and race consciousness. Usually offered every second year.
Chad Williams

AAAS 170a Black Childhoods
[ deis-us ss ]
Explores historical experiences of growing up black in America. We will examine the role of race in shaping experiences and meanings of childhood from slavery to the present day, including studies of black girlhood and boyhood. Usually offered every second year.
Wangui Maigai

AAAS/ENG 80a Black Looks: The Promise and Perils of Photography
[ deis-us djw hum wi ]
Formerly offered as ENG 80a.
Explores photography and Africans, African-Americans and Caribbean people, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. This course will examine fiction that refers to the photograph; various photographic archives; and theorists on photography and looking. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

AAAS/ENG 141b Critical Race Theory
[ hum ]
Traces an intellectual and political history of critical race theory that begins in law classrooms in the 1980s and continues in the 21st century activist strategies of Black Lives Matter movement. We proceed by reading defining theoretical texts alongside African American literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

AAAS/FA 75b History of African American Art
[ ca deis-us ]
"Black art has always existed," stated artist Romare Bearden, "It just hasn't been looked for in the right places." This course examines how black artists in the U.S. explore beauty, individuality, justice and other themes through personal, racial, and societal lenses. Usually offered every third year.
Ellen Tani

AAAS/SOC 177a The Other African Americans: Comparative Perspectives on Black Ethnic Diversity
[ ss ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took AAAS 177a in prior years.
Explores the identities, immigration and integration of Black Africans and Afro-Caribbeans in the United States and United Kingdom from interdisciplinary perspectives. It examines intra-racial and inter-ethnic similarities and differences, conflicts and collaborations that animate the lived experiences of native and new Blacks. Usually offered every second year.
Derron Wallace

AAAS/WGS 136a Black Feminist Thought
[ ss ]
Formerly offered as AAAS 136a.
Critical examination of the historical, political, economic, and ideological factors that have shaped the lives of African-American women in the United States. Analyzing foundation theoretical texts, fiction, and film over two centuries, this class seeks to understand black women's writing and political activism in the U.S. Usually offered every second year.
Shoniqua Roach

AAAS/WGS 149a Black Privacy
[ deis-us ]
Informed by recent work in Black feminist, queer, and trans studies, this course explores "Black privacy" and its various meanings and contours. What is Black privacy? Can "Black privacy" exist given the public construction of blackness? How do we make legal claims to Black reproductive, informational, biomedical and domestic privacy when it is already a nebulous concept and an illusory constitutional right? How might Black privacy safeguard against or potentially reinforce the proliferation of public blackness, or its hypervisibility, iconicity, and/or surveillance? What is the erotic potentiality of Black privacy? How do concepts and practices of privacy respond to carceral regimes that animate Black surveillance and counter-surveillance? How do we balance the use of digital media as a strategy of self-making and community building even as Black critical information studies scholars demonstrate that the Internet is a space in which private information is sold and exchanged for "public" resources? Usually offered every second year.
Shoniqua Roach

AMST 120a The Social and Theological Development of the Black Church in America
[ ss ]
Introduces students to the complex development of black Christianity in America. Topics include the emergence of various denominations; the development of particular theological, liturgical, and musical traditions; and the impact the black church has had on the political lives of African-Americans. Usually offered every second year.
Cory Hunter

AMST 121b Gospel Music in America
[ ss ]
Students learn how to "read" gospel music as a text – musically, lyrically, and from the standpoint of physical and visual performance. They explore gospel music's theological underpinnings, and they consider how gospel has shaped and been shaped by African-American history can culture. Usually offered every second year.
Cory Hunter

COML 168a Things Fall Apart: The Novel and Postcolonial Anarchy
[ hum ]
Explores the shared history of British Imperialism and examines the postcolonial novel's response to the breakdown of colonial power and the advent of the postcolonial state. We will read novels from South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Usually offered every fourth year.
Harleen Singh

ECON 69a The Economics of Race and Gender
[ deis-us ss ]
Prerequisite: ECON 2a or 10a.
The role of race and gender in economic decision making. Mainstream and alternative economic explanations for discrimination, and analysis of the economic status of women and minorities. Discussion of specific public policies related to race, class, and gender. Usually offered every second year.
Elizabeth Brainerd

ED 170a Critical Perspectives in Urban Education
[ ss wi ]
Examines the nature of urban schools, their links to the social and political context, and the perspectives of the people who inhabit them. Explores the historical development of urban schools; the social, economic, and personal hardships facing urban students; and challenges of urban school reform. Usually offered every year.
Derron Wallace

ENG 48b The Black Fantastic
[ deis-us hum ]
What is the "fantastic" and how does its definition shift when preceded by the adjective "black"? How do black authors use fantastic forms to not only tell "truths" unavailable in "realistic" narratives, but to imagine freer futures? Usually offered every third year.
Gabrielle Everett

ENG 107a Women Writing Desire: Caribbean Fiction and Film
[ hum ]
About eight novels of the last two decades (by Cliff, Cruz, Danticat, Garcia, Kempadoo, Kincaid, Mittoo, Nunez, Pineau, Powell, or Rosario), drawn from across the region, and read in dialogue with popular culture, theory, and earlier generations of male and female writers of the region. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

ENG 117a The Harlem Renaissance
[ deis-us hum ]
Examines the explosive artistic, political, and cultural period known as the Harlem Renaissance. A major movement in African American literature, the Harlem Renaissance sought to redefine American blackness and establish artistic freedom. Usually offered every third year.
Gabrielle Everett

ENG 127b Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts
[ hum nw ]
Beginning with the region's representation as a tabula rasa, examines the textual and visual constructions of the Caribbean as colony, homeland, backyard, paradise, and Babylon, and how the region's migrations have prompted ideas about evolution, hedonism, imperialism, nationalism, and diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Faith Smith

ENG 138b Toni Morrison
[ hum ]
An advanced introduction to the oeuvre of Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison. Reading her novels and nonfiction, we investigate concerns that shaped our world in the last century and haunt the current one, foregrounding Morrison's writing as a key site of trouble and of transformation. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 167b Writing the Nation: James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison
[ deis-us hum ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 57b in prior years.
An in-depth study of three major American authors of the twentieth century. Highlights the contributions of each author to the American literary canon and to its diversity. Explores how these novelists narrate cross-racial, cross-gendered, cross-regional, and cross-cultural contact and conflict in the United States. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

HIST 71a Latin American and Caribbean History I: Colonialism, Slavery, Freedom
[ djw hum nw ss ]
Studies colonialism in Latin America and Caribbean, focusing on coerced labor and struggles for freedom as defining features of the period: conquest; Indigenous, African, and Asian labor; colonial institutions and economics; Independence and revolutionary movements. Usually offered every year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 71b Latin American and Caribbean History II: Modernity, Medicine, Sexuality
[ djw hum nw ss ]
Studies the idea of "modernity" in Latin America and Caribbean, centered on roles of health and human reproduction in definitions of the "modern" citizen: post-slavery labor, race and national identity; modern politics and economics; transnational relations. Usually offered every year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 153b Slavery and the American Civil War
[ deis-us dl ss ]
A survey of the history of slavery, the American South, the antislavery movement, the coming of the Civil War, and Reconstruction. Usually offered every second year.
Abigail Cooper

HIST 157b The Secret Lives of the Enslaved: Marginalized Voices and the Writing of History
[ deis-us dl ss wi ]
Seeks to understand not only the system but the inner lives and cultures of slaves within that system. This course is a reading-intensive seminar examining both primary and secondary sources on American slaves. Focuses on the American South but includes sources on the larger African diaspora. Usually offered every second year.
Abigail Cooper

HIST 159b Modern African American History
[ deis-us ss ]
Introduces students to some of the key social, political, economic, and cultural moments that defined the African American experience in the United States, 1865 through the present. Through the use of primary and secondary source materials, critical surveys, lectures, and guided discussion, this class highlights the richness and significance of the African American history. This course covers a diverse array of key themes and topics including: Reconstruction and segregation; the Great Migration; the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Feminist movements; black political power; mass incarceration and the surveillance state; and Hip Hop culture. Usually offered every second year.
Leah Wright Rigueur

HIST 162a Writing on the Wall: Histories of Graffiti in the Americas
[ djw dl ss ]
Focuses on the history of graffiti in the U.S. from 1960s forward. Includes the historical role of Caribbean migration, the impact of criminology and economic recession of the 1970s on graffiti culture, and the relationship between private property, public space, and graffiti. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 172b Historicizing the Black Radical Tradition
[ djw ss ]
Introduces students to the many ways that people and scholars of African descent have historically struggled against racial oppresion by formulating theories, philosophies, and practices of liberation rooted in their experiences and understandings of labor, capitalism, and modernity. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

HIST 175b Resistance and Revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean
[ djw nw ss wi ]
Focuses on questions of race, gender and modernity in resistence movements and revolutions in Latin American and Caribbean history. The Haitian Revolution, Tupac Amaru Rebellion, and Vaccination Riots in Brazil are some topics that will be covered. Usually offered every second year.
Gregory Childs

HS 515a Race/Ethnicity and Gender in Health and Human Services Research
Explores theoretical and empirical approaches to race/ethnicity and gender as factors in health and human services practices, programs, and policies in the United States. Begins by examining current data on racial/ethnic and gender differences in health, mental health, functional status, and lifestyle. Attention then turns to alternative accounts of the causes of these differences. Although primary focus is on patterns of race/ethnicity and gender differences in health outcomes and services that have received the most comprehensive attention, the course offers perspectives on research methods and analytic frameworks that can be applied to other issues. Usually offered every year.
Rajesh Sampath

HSSP 114b Racial/Ethnic and Gender Inequalities in Health and Health Care
[ ss ]
An examination of the epidemiological patterns of health status by race/ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic status. Addresses current theories and critiques explaining disparities in health status, access, quality, and conceptual models, frameworks, and interventions for eliminating inequalities. Usually offered every year.
Staff

THA 144b Black Theater and Performance
[ ca deis-us ]
Explores aesthetic innovations and transformations in African American theater and performance and examines the crucial role the stage has played in shaping perceptions and understandings of blackness. Usually offered every second year.
Isaiah Wooden